Christian laughs when he sees the roller coaster in the center of a large, relatively clear space. He doesn’t actually do rooftop solar installations, but he’s gone on enough service calls to have no fear of ladders or heights.
The roller coaster is a wooden skeleton, not even the biggest one in the park, but he doesn’t know that. A few sections have collapsed in on themselves. He picks the most stable-looking portion and climbs up the latticework of the exterior. A few sweaty and splintered minutes later, he hits the top.
He did not think this through.
There’s nothing up here but rotting track. Even if he lies flat, he’ll still be visible from the ground. And he can’t see any better options from this vantage point. The trees are greedy for the sky, obscuring everything. He can make out a few areas where there might be some sort of buildings, a distant Ferris wheel, and a couple of other ride things breaking through the trees, but there’s no way he’ll make it to any of them in time.
Down a tremendous swooping dip, a single cart is still on the track. Taking a deep breath, he aims for it. He doesn’t realize until he’s halfway there that it’s completely possible for him to die doing this. But he needs to make it far enough in the competition to impress the company. A broken neck will not impress anyone. Especially not Rosiee. Whispering promises of a cushy job, already picking out furniture for the biggest house in the town (without solar panels, fuck his monthly energy bills), which he’ll share with Rosiee and their two kids and a dog, he makes it to the cart and climbs in.
And laughs in surprise. On the side of the cart, stamped into the metal, is his mother’s maiden name. STRATTON ENGINEERING, it says. What are the odds? He never met her family—they disowned her when she ran off with his father. It wasn’t a romantic story. It was a story of slowly being ground down, worn thin, aged before his eyes. He was always sure she regretted her choice—regretted him—regretted giving up what she came from. She died of breast cancer three years ago. He read once that stress can lodge in the body, can fester and multiply, a cancer of the spirit that contributes to a cancer of the body. So in a way, her choice to abandon money and comfort for his sucky, loser dad actually killed her, didn’t it?
It feels like a sign, seeing the name Stratton here. Like this is his chance back into the world she left behind. The one he’s going to make for himself, and his wife, and his kids. He smiles and settles in, kept company by an imaginary Rosiee while the real one bleeds and sweats and worries in the middle of an engine.
* * *
—
Logan has always been afraid of clowns. A few years ago, there was the double whammy of the new It movies plus the random clown sightings in forests, and the recurring nightmare he’d thought was left behind in childhood popped back up. He didn’t sleep well for weeks. He’d never admit his phobia to anyone—can barely admit it to himself—but really, is it that stupid? It’s a more rational fear than, say, sharks. It’s 100 percent guaranteed that a shark can’t get you if you don’t go into the ocean. But clowns? Apparently they hang out in forests now.
Logan thinks of all of this as he stares at the giant clown head. What its original purpose was, he can’t say. Its nose has fallen off, and only one eye has kept its paint. But the clown’s gaping mouth is a doorway, framed by cracking red lips and browned teeth. He can’t figure out what it led to, because the building behind it is gone. (There was never a building. It was the entrance to a tent featuring a magic show parents forced their kids to endure so they could sit in the shade for a few blessed minutes, rest their feet from trying to figure out where the next ride was. Logan would be relieved to know the clown itself was false advertising.)
“Buck up, buttercup,” Logan whispers to himself. What better way to conquer a fear than to go into the very belly of the beast—or in this case, the mouth of the clown. Logan climbs in, finding a perfect body-shaped space between the teeth and the tongue.
See? Clowns can’t hurt him. This clown will help him. It’ll be a funny story to tell his employees someday, when he’s part of Frye Technologies. Or, better, when he owns Frye Technologies. He won’t even have to change the name when he takes over. Imagining his future—glossing over what app, exactly, will somehow lead to this chain of events—is like drinking a warm glass of milk, bland and soothing and soporific.
Logan, once plagued by nightmares of clowns, falls asleep in one. Much like the clown, Logan needs a new nose, or at least major sinus surgery. His snores saw through the air, amplified by the cavernous clown mouth he sleeps in.
* * *
—
By two p.m., Isabella has had enough.
It’s hot. She needs to pee. She hasn’t heard a single noise all day. The whole thing feels like a practical joke. Like that Sydney woman planned it. Oh, god. What if she did? What if when she told them all about her prank show, it was dramatic irony for her audience?
It can’t be that. No YouTuber could afford this. Unless she was only pretending to be a YouTuber. Isabella’s heart races, her breaths getting fast and shallow. She closes her eyes, regains control. No. Ox Extreme Sports has to be real.
She has a lot of notes for them, though. She’ll present them smartly. Articulately. Mixed with praise and an action plan for how to improve and market their brand through this stupid competition. She doesn’t want to win, anyway. She wants a fucking job. She wants these miserable fuckers who can afford to run a $50,000 children’s game to give her a salary and benefits.
She pushes free of the clump of topiary she had shoved herself into. Her suit jacket snags and she can feel the pulled thread down to her very bones. She can’t afford to replace this. It’s her best interview outfit.
Humiliated and angry, Isabella refuses to stoop any lower. She will not pee in the bushes. Her pumps are almost silent as she winds her way back toward the camp, mentally practicing the speech that will get her a job with these fucktrumpets. Maybe, she thinks, carefully timing the smile that will soften her words, the efficacy of offering a $50,000 prize for a competition that wasn’t advertised or broadcast is worth reviewing.
After thirty minutes of walking and composing, she’s sure her speech will come across as both polished and unpracticed as soon as she can get in front of someone from the company. But she’s made a mistake. There are no landmarks to look for. The trees are so tall and crowded that, combined with pathway walls, they obscure everything. And she’s been walking way too long now.